Social Media

This Week in Social Networking

With dozens of new sites popping up every week, and plenty of attention from the mainstream press, it's been a busy week for social networks.

Niche Networks Keep On Comin'

Are there any social networking niches yet to be filled? With scores of new entries into this space, the developers and entrepreneurs seem to think so. eBible, a social site for Bible study, moved in to public beta this week, while Mashable added two new contenders to the MySpace for Sports category - FanNation and Fanpage (both launched at the start of this month). Dogster, a niche social network for dogs, raised $1 million to help it expand, while ChickAdvisor, a review site for women, also earned some coverage.

Mixi It Up

It's been a big week for Japan's MySpace equivalent, Mixi. News of a Mixi IPO began to spread on Monday, and the company debuted on the Tokyo Stock Exchange on Thursday. The value of the shares doubled, making the Mixi founder a US billionaire. Meanwhile, Cyworld and other Asian social networks continue to gain masses of attention from the press.

YouTube, MySpace and Universal

But by far the biggest stories of the week centered around the two hot properties of the social networking space: MySpace and YouTube. YouTube's ongoing saga of lonelygirl15 gained attention worldwide, with bloggers naming the show's actress as Jessica Rose. Appearances on CNN, MTV and The Tonight Show followed. Meanwhile, YouTube and MySpace both came under fire from Universal Music chief executive Doug Morris, who claimed the services are "copyright infringers and owe us tens of millions of dollars". Is Universal set to sue the social networks, or will they seek deals with these massively popular sites?

MySpace Widgets: Trouble Ahead?

MySpace's developer ecosystem - the growing number of MySpace codes, MySpace layouts, MySpace trackers and other add-ons - was also a hot topic. News Corp chief operating officer Peter Chernin told investors at an industry conference earlier this week that the company delivers massive amounts of traffic to YouTube and other third parties - MySpace hopes to build in-house versions of these tools, he added. Later in the week, a Mashable tipster ran across TheSpringBox, a site owned by News Corp that aims to do exactly that: develop widgets for MySpace users to drop into their pages. A clock and an RSS widget are currently in testing, and in future the modules may also work on your desktop.

Last but not least, Facebook, America's second biggest social network, is making waves - they've announced plans to open up the site, allowing anyone to join a series of regional networks. Will disgruntled users hop over to Uspot, a well-made Facebook alternative?

And with dozens more stories failing to make the cut, the social networking space is certainly hotting up.

Lonelygirl15 became a media pandemic this week - will the series fizzle out now the YouTube starlet has been exposed as a fake?

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